DURBAN - The University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) and the Durban University of Technology (DUT) said students' demands for financial clearance were likely to push them into bankruptcy.
Both universities revealed this during the Portfolio Committee on Higher Education, Science and Innovation briefing on the recent student unrest at the institutions.
Since the start of the academic year, unregistered students have been disrupting lectures, demanding registration without making payments for registration fees and towards their student debt.
According to the institutions, staff members have been intimidated, victimised and had their cars torched. Some had to flee their work stations for safety due to the destruction of property.
UKZN's Professor Nana Poku said the university could not provide free enrolment to every unfunded student, when even government policy on fully subsidised higher education did not provide funding to all students. Additionally, any concessions would risk pushing the university into bankruptcy.
“The financial clearance concessions already in place have a cash flow implication in excess of R1 billion and the financial clearance concessions demanded by students have a total cost of R2.3bn. A package has been put in place to help with financial clearances.”
DUT vice-chancellor Professor Thandwa Mthembu said the university remained anxious about disbursing allowances given the 2017-2020 outstanding close out report and its impact on cash flow.
Mthembu said the report remained an albatross around their necks and had also spilled over to this year as some fees for funded students were not paid last year. The scrapping of advance payments for this year until next month is likely to be a great impediment to the disbursement of monthly allowances and could exacerbate student strife.
“The required payments are determined based on annual family income with a maximum cap on the historic debt amount payable to assist those students with very high levels of historic debt,” Mthembu said.
The UKZN Student Representative Council’s president, Malusi Zuma, said the unrest at the university was largely due to the government's failure.
“It is true that there has been a series of cases of unrest at UKZN during this period of registration. While the nature and cause of the unrest is as the result of the internal operations and proceedings of the university, it is also true that most of our issues which have led to the unrest emanate from the national government level which the university and the SRC have no control of. The poor NSFAS (National Student Financial Aid Scheme) administrator has let us down big time this year and the situation NSFAS has put us in has caused irreparable damage,” the president said.
Dr Linda Meyer of Universities SA said political instability, NSFAS delays, and insufficient student housing were some of the drivers of unrest at KwaZulu-Natal universities. Meyer said that pointed to the aftermath of broader systemic failure.
Daily News